Hi Mark! That's tough to diagnose from here!
Have you tried to let a print-shop do the work? Do the pics come out better then? Do your pics look ok on your monitor?
That might be an indicator that your printing process is not up to scratch.
Unfortunately there are so many parameters you can tweak with printers and printing software, that you can have a tough time finding the right ones to fiddle with...

Well Mark, I have the problem of sitting in front of a German Windoze so I don't know exactly how it is called on your computer. But: you normally can get to the properties/attributes of your printer and there you can do some printer adjustments in the Window$ system control whatchamacallit... Helloooo, anybody here who can help Mark

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I think the problem is that the "whatchamacallit" is printer specific as the dialog box tab will likely be provided by the printer driver. One would have hoped that the written manual (or an online manual) for the printer might offer some advice.

Hi Robinhood. I often have the opposite problem: my pictures look good on the screen but turn out light when printed. I found that some editors show an image more like the print than others, but I usually darken them slightly no matter which one I use. You might simply brighten the image, or lighten shadows before printing. I always save my altered printer image in a separate file so things don't get mixed up.

Sorry for length of delay in reply, Thanks for assistance and kind offerings.

I have played with the controls on the printer, what it will let me play with, that is. I have not acheived a better result yet.

I found that our local Asda were doing prints 10x 8 for £2 somthing, so invested in a trip to them and had 3 random prints, those that I had difficulty in prointing. All turned out reasonable bearing in mind only using a snappy camera.

The point is that they were much better than my attempts. I have an Epson Photo R 200. Looks like I need to get a better camera which is on the cards anyway and a far better printer. Looking at Canon 450 any comments about a good A3 printer.